It’s not an insult to Aziz Ansari to say that the best episodes of his show Master of None, which he co-created and stars in, are often the ones where he fades into the background. Still, it may be a weird conclusion to arrive at when you consider how crucial Ansari’s vision and comedic style—infectiously goofy, pop-culture savvy, and cleverly observational—are to the spirit of the series. When Netflix’s Master of None debuted in 2015, it garnered immediate praise from critics and viewers who admired its humor and keen social commentary. The show also stood out amid a renewed mainstream conversation about Hollywood diversity: Aziz and his co-creator Alan Yang (also a Parks and Recreation alumnus) made a show with people of color both in front of and behind the camera, and that had no qualms about doing entire storylines that probe race or gender.

In a nutshell, Master of None is about Dev Shah (Ansari), a 30-something Indian American actor living in New York and navigating love, work, family, and friends. But the show gets the most mileage out of this simple premise by pairing it with a vignette-y approach to its episodes. Less beholden to a well-plotted, serialized arc about Dev, Master of None has let its attention wander to other characters or big ideas whenever its creators please. In Season 1, this meant viewers got wonderful episodes like “Parents,” a flashback-filled tribute to the sacrifices many immigrants make for their children; “Ladies and Gentlemen,” a candid look at how differently men and women experience the world; and “Old People,” a poignant tale that humanized its elderly characters. These episodes work so well precisely because they decentered Dev’s viewpoint, and earnestly tried to dive into another’s.

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If anything, Master of None’s Season 2, which debuts Friday, doubles down on this ethos of curiosity and reveals it to be the show’s greatest strength. TV is filled with episodes dedicated to supporting characters (The Ringer’s Alison Herman calls these “Deep-Benchers”). But with Master of None, such episodes aren’t one-offs; they’re regular extensions of the show’s apparently broader mission of elevating different viewpoints, usually those of people on the margins of society (senior citizens, immigrants, women). It’s no coincidence that the most memorable and powerful episodes of the new season are the ones that, deliberately, have little to do with the joys and troubles of its star.

Which isn’t to say Dev doesn’t matter; most of the show is still about him. In both seasons, he’s sometimes the entry point into these other stories, like when he’s asking a friend about coming out to her family, or talking to his girlfriend’s grandmother about the loneliness of aging. This tactic—making Dev an audience proxy, or using his ignorance about a subject to model his eventual enlightenment—could come off as moralistic. Some episodes could easily be renamed by attaching “Dev Learns a Lesson About …” to the title, but more often than not, the approach felt fairly organic in Season 1.

Which brings us to Season 2, where Master of None has gotten ambitious on several fronts. It’s more cinematic, an overused term that’s accurate in this case, given how heavily influenced it was by the Italian films Ansari and Yang devoured between seasons. The show is as funny and as well-written as ever, and has deepened its commitment to understanding how love and intimacy work in a hyperconnected age. The weakest part of the season, unfortunately, is perhaps its main arc: a confusing relationship between Dev and a woman he meets in Italy.

Just when you think you know who the show wants you to care about, the camera yanks you away.

Meanwhile, the season’s two best episodes—“New York, I Love You” and “Thanksgiving”—aren’t about Dev at all. In the former, he and his friends appear for less than a minute; in the latter, Ansari shines as a supporting character. “New York, I Love You” tells three loosely linked stories about three different people living in the city: a doorman, a young deaf woman, and an immigrant cab driver. “Thanksgiving” is a coming-of-age tale spanning 22 years that follows Dev’s childhood friend Denise (a terrific Lena Waithe) and her road to coming out as gay to her family. Both installments are beautifully shot and deeply humane. And both focus on characters of color whose stories rarely appear in TV or film, in part because of their ability, socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation.

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“New York, I Love You” starts out with Dev and his friends Arnold (Eric Wareheim) and Denise talking about seeing a new Nicolas Cage movie. Without warning, the camera wanders away from them on the street and begins following a luxury-apartment doorman named Eddie (Frank Harts) as he listens to a older white resident complain about not being able to call Native Americans “Indians” anymore. It’s a thrilling moment as you realize Master of None is going a Slacker-esque route: Just when you think you know who the show wants you to care about, the camera yanks you away and introduces you to another, equally engrossing life.

This is particularly true of the middle story, which follows Maya (Treshelle Edmond), a young woman who works at a bodega. It takes a few moments before it hits you: Not only is she deaf, but also the sound for the episode has completely cut out. The rest of Maya’s story unfolds in silence, in American Sign Language with English subtitles. It’s perhaps trite to say that good TV transports viewers into other worlds, or at least outside their own experiences. But Master of None does so viscerally for hearing audiences, catching them off guard and temporarily plunging them into a simulation of Maya’s everyday reality. For deaf or hearing-impaired audiences, the show temporarily pulls their typically marginalized experience to the center. And Master of None does so while making Maya’s story every bit as funny and engaging as it would Dev’s—even if we never see her again.

Dev is reminding viewers that it’s okay—that it’s good—to be curious about the lives of others.

The sequence calls to mind a brilliant scene from Season 1’s “Ladies and Gentlemen.” In it, the camera cuts back and forth between Dev and Arnold’s journey home from a bar (a largely peaceful trip set to Bobby McFerrin’s jaunty tune “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” that’s interrupted only by sidewalk dog poop), and a woman’s walk from the same bar (a terrifying, paranoid trek fraught with harassment and drunken stalking). This season, Master of None wades further into its experiment with perspective-shifting and manages to fully invest viewers in total strangers, if only for a few minutes.

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Right after “New York, I Love You” is “Thanksgiving,” which isn’t about a stranger but does flesh out an awesome character that Season 1 didn’t spend much time with. The episode—co-written by Waithe, who based the story on her own life—begins on Thanksgiving Day in 1995 and returns to the holiday every several years, following Denise from childhood to the present-day. Always at her side is Dev, though he and Denise have effectively switched places. For half an hour, she’s the star, and he’s the funny, supportive friend.

But the dynamic that really matters in “Thanksgiving” (directed by Melina Matsoukas) is between Denise and her mom Catherine (played by a radiant Angela Bassett). “Both of you are minorities ... a group of people who have to work twice as hard in life to get half as far,” she tells a young Denise and Dev in 1995. “And Denise, you’re a black woman so you’re going to have to work three times as hard.” It’s an idea that feels central to an episode largely populated by black women of different generations—Denise’s grandmother, aunt, mother, and the “friends” she eventually brings home.

Denise (Lena Waithe) in “Thanksgiving.” (Netflix)

The episode revisits Catherine’s words years later when Denise finally comes out to her as a lesbian. Shocked by her daughter’s revelation, Catherine can barely choke out a response. “I don’t want life to be hard for you,” she says, holding back tears. “It’s hard enough being a black woman in this world, and now you want to go and add something else to that.” Their brief conversation is followed by other, uneasy Thanksgiving meals, where Dev is always a gleeful guest (and the only man present) trying to cut the tension that arises whenever Denise’s dates show up. But Master of None’s attention belongs fully to Denise and her mother, and the years of fear, confusion, and love that define their relationship. It’s a treatment at least as layered and profound as the one given to Dev’s bond with his own parents, if not more so.

Unlike ensemble shows that use perspective-shifting to build out their self-contained fictional worlds (think Game of Thrones), Master of None doesn’t seem to conceive episodes like “Thanksgiving” with a larger narrative endgame in mind. You get the sense that Ansari and Yang are showing you people you may not meet again simply because the creators find them interesting and worth celebrating. And given who Master of None ends up spending time with, it’s hard not to feel like there’s a moral dimension to the show’s inquisitive, inclusive brand of empathy.

There’s also an appealing humility at work. Yes, Dev is still unquestionably the protagonist and soul of Master of None. But in the episodes where he’s eagerly asking other people for their unique insights (like in Season 2’s excellent, sprawling “First Date”), or when he lets them take control of the spotlight, he’s openly admitting there’s a lot he doesn’t know. And by extension, he’s reminding viewers that it’s okay—that it’s good, even imperative—to be curious about the lives of others, particularly those who are so often told by society that theirs don’t matter as much. The thing is, Ansari is a sharp, charismatic, and lovable performer who could easily carry the show on his own. That he chooses not to is exactly what makes Master of None so special.

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Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal Trump his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop which includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

Although the former secretary of state’s contentious relationship with the president didn’t help matters, Tillerson’s management style left a department in disarray.

Rex Tillerson is hardly the first person to be targeted in a tweet from Donald Trump, but on Tuesday morning, he became the first Cabinet official to be fired by one. It was an ignominious end to Tillerson’s 13-month stint as secretary of state, a tenure that would have been undistinguished if it weren’t so entirely destructive.

Compared with expectations for other members of Trump’s Cabinet, the disastrous results of Tillerson’s time in office are somewhat surprising. Unlike the EPA’s Scott Pruitt, Tillerson did not have obvious antipathy for the department he headed; unlike HUD’s Ben Carson, he had professional experience that was relevant to the job; and unlike Education’s Betsy DeVos, his confirmation hearing wasn't a disaster.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them.

On Friday night, Facebook suspended the account of Cambridge Analytica, the political-data company backed by the billionaire Robert Mercer that consulted on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns.

The action came just before The Guardian and The New York Timesdropped major reports in which the whistle-blower Christopher Wylie alleged that Cambridge Analytica had used data that an academic had allegedly improperly exfiltrated from the social network. These new stories, backed by Wylie’s account and internal documents, followed years of reporting by The Guardianand The Intercept about the possible problem.

The details could seem Byzantine. Aleksandr Kogan, then a Cambridge academic, founded a company, Global Science Research, and immediately took on a major client, Strategic Communication Laboratories, which eventually gave birth to Cambridge Analytica. (Steve Bannon, an adviser to the company and a former senior adviser to Trump, reportedly picked the name.)

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

It’s not that they can’t consider other people’s perspectives. It’s that they don’t do so automatically.

It’s a rare person who goes out of their way to spend time with psychopaths, and a rarer one still who repeatedly calls a prison to do so. But after more than a year of meetings and negotiation, Arielle Baskin-Sommers from Yale University finally persuaded a maximum-security prison in Connecticut to let her work with their inmates, and to study those with psychopathic tendencies.

Psychopaths, by definition, have problems understanding the emotions of other people, which partly explains why they are so selfish, why they so callously disregard the welfare of others, and why they commit violent crimes at up to three times the rate of other people.

But curiously, they seem to have no difficulty in understanding what other people think, want, or believe—the skill variously known as perspective-taking, mentalizing, or theory of mind. “Their behavior seems to suggest that they don’t consider the thoughts of others,” says Baskin-Sommers, but their performance on experiments suggests otherwise. When they hear a story and are asked to explicitly say what a character is thinking, they can.